ADDICTION AND ECOLOGY: HOW INTOXICATION CULTURE KILLS OUR PLANET AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

An Anthology about Intersections of Toxicity, Eco-Systems, Wildlife, Colonialism, Dependency, and How to Heal

This volume constitutes the first anthology about ecology and addiction—exploring tremendously important intersections between the two fields. The two intersect in such powerful ways that their study seems key for anyone interested in averting impending disaster and de-escalating the speeding cycle of ecological collapse and annihilation.

It contains peer-reviewed studies as well as essays and opinion pieces in a DIY spirit to gather relevant information related to environmental issues, animal liberation, health, and/or addictive habits/substances as well as the roles that corporations and profit-based industries play in cultivating and maintaining dependency. As such, this volume aims more broadly to raise questions rather than answer them, demonstrating primarily that the intersection of ecology and addiction warrants close and immediate attention. This means more public debate and engagement on these topics in the media, at town hall meetings, in prisons, at job sites, in schools, on farms and reservations, during city council sessions, in homes, at community centers, in NGO offices and planning sessions, on the street, at clubs, during counseling sessions, and wherever people organize for social change.

Studies have already suggested that Native and Indigenous communities provide better care-taking services for natural habitats (such as forests and jungles) than settler colonialist societies. Studies have also shown, in many cases, higher rates of addictive substances among Native, Aboriginal, and First Nation peoples (hardly incidental given that European colonialists used land theft, impoverishment, and addictive substances as weapons to divide and conquer local communities). Clearly, defending habitats and shared eco-systems means defending Native and Indigenous peoples. Likewise, defending Indigenous and Native peoples means addressing tobacco, alcohol, technology, and addiction as well as the arbitrary criminalization of certain drugs such as marijuana and peyote. In both instances (defending habitats and Indigenous peoples), this means addressing the addictions of settler colonialists, white people, wealthy nations, and consumption-oriented society that drive emissions, animal exploitation, and ecological habitat destruction, in part, precisely because academia and government policies have largely overlooked these vital connections.

This volume critically addresses such intersections and more.

Have you ever considered the effect that alcohol, cigarettes, coffee, cocaine, coal industry, antidepressants, pharmaceutical waste, pornography, meat, sugar, beer, vivisection, smoking, marijuana, or electricity have on nature, habitats, animals, wildlife, and aquatic life? Have you ever wondered what strategies that organizations and social movements have had to support temperance, sobriety, and addiction treatment alongside social justice, equal exchange, and degrowth? Perhaps you wondered about the intersections of colonialism, racism, drug trade, incarceration, and the supposed "war on drugs"? Maybe you have asked yourself as you feel dragged along through infinite scrolling, gamification, and the illusion of choice (carefully designed by software programming) if IT companies profit from your distraction, suffering, and insomnia? Maybe you have pondered why we hear so much about Covid or postmodernism but so little about the intersectionality of substance abuse and ecotoxicity, of addictive behavior and growth-oriented economics, of dislocated/despiritualized nature and the religion of nation-state capitalism? Or maybe you just like revolutionary xVx punk rock music about Earth Liberation and anarchism? And maybe you also want to radically change academia and contemporary research to better match the needs of all people, animals, and plants on this biosphere?

Whether Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Chinese, Jewish, New Age, atheist, pagan, communist, anarchist, or all of the above, this book has something for you. Even if you simply want to better address personal addictions through self-help and find more harmony in your own life, this book can help shed light on how reconnecting with one another and nature can facilitate that process. 

From Frederick Douglass to John Africa, from Guatemala to South Africa, issues of domestication, ecotoxicity, and naturalism remain relevant. Storytelling matters. And we have drowned in stories that have convinced us that opiates and other opioids, "Artificial Intelligence" and other androids offer the only future.

Yet minimalism, simple living, homeschooling, voluntary simplicity, radical environmentalism, and sober living for the revolution can give us new stories and new opportunities beyond business-as-usual. Whether through Motivational Interviewing (MI), Twelve Step Programs, Straight Edge (sXe), Vegan Sobriety, Native Traditions, Non-Violent Communication, Faith Communities, and/or other methods, we can help one another heal.

The time has come to learn about the birds and the bees...and the effects that fossil fuels, cigarettes, and other commercial intoxicants have on them.

In tandem with that process, we can take direct action now.